Leave The Kids Alone

I was talking to a boy who was on his way to the gym earlier in the week. He was a well-known inter-county footballer from Derry and not fond of referees. I enquired as to why he was bothering with something like a gym when this time of year is for resting up after a long season from the year gone by. I can remember from my own playing days that no one ever trained from late August until the following Easter. By the time the end of the summer had arrived, your club was either out of the running for any silverware that there was no point in running around a field twenty times on a Wednesday night, or they were playing enough league and Championship games to keep you naturally fit anyway. Training was only for the early part of the season to trim down the belly and get the lungs at full capacity. Teams still won All-Irelands and county championships back then so it must have been an alright strategy.

Nowadays the pressure is on young lads to train eleven months in the year. The player I was talking to said his individual training was vital as if he didn’t do it, the management would know. He said they take a blood sample, urine sample, hair sample and a photograph of you naked to make sure you’re alcohol and drug free as well as toning up your body. That’s a world gone crazy. I’m led to believe that Canavan is a great man for the drink abstinence of his players at Errigal. I’d say the same boy was living it up rightly in his early twenties running around Omagh or Cookstown at the weekend. These middle-aged managers are some craic, forcing some kind of Chinese military regime on their players when they themselves were half cut at throw-in.

What has happened to the carefree days of seeing how many cowboy suppers you could fit in, in a week, without piling on the weight? It was some feat, back in the day, finding a balance between calorie and alcohol consumption without the manager suspecting an over-indulgence. I know of a few players on the great Monaghan team of the 80s who had the diet of some kind of American Texan oil baron and still managed to make the weight on any given Sunday. I’m told that nowadays that personal gym training you have to do in January is a litmus test for modern managers. They apparently attend secret training sessions that inform them of how to read eye and body language to spot the spoofers in the camp.

I’m also led to believe that Baker Bradley can look at a man from ten paces and tell if he carried out his two-dozen bench presses within the last 24 hours. The likes of Bradley, O’Rourke and McCartan are as good as the mind-readers you get on the television. It’s the first think county boards look at before they appoint a manager; do they have supernatural powers. Chancers haven’t a hope of hoodwinking these lads. I don’t know how true this is but apparently Mickey Moran used to condemn anyone caught neglecting their personal training to his Room of Shame. In there, he’d tie the spoofer to a chair and encourage the locals to berate him with insults regarding his playing ability, manhood and family history dating back centuries. Muldoon subsequently never missed a gym session til Moran headed off to Mayo.

But that’s the way things are and rarely to sports revert back to how it used to be. The fear is that things get worse in terms of preparation and what is expected of our young playing members. I hope we don’t suck the individuality out of them. I fully understand the need to self-assess and improve though. Take the Gaelic Life newspaper for example. It is roundly viewed as a good read on a weekly basis. But editor Bogue should maybe be looking at how to move it to a level of greatness. And how to you do that? – monitor his team. Bench presses and the like are no use to pen-pushers but abstinence from harmful substances can clear the mind and help create moments of great clarity and insight. It wouldn’t be an altogether ridiculous idea to perhaps invest in some kind of physical assessment on a Monday morning with the threat of disciplinary action hanging over their weekend activities. I’d include Brolly, Devenney and Burns in that although the Mullaghbawn man will be a hard one to nail He’s keeping his nose clean for bigger fish. You wouldn’t catch him making disparaging remarks about female lineswomen. There’s a skeleton there somewhere, we all have them, but it’ll take a bit of digging to reel Burns in.

But you see what I’m getting at. Our young lads are often criticised in the media for being self-obsessed, lazy and mannerless. Little do you know what discipline they possess in order to earn a starting jersey every Sunday at all club levels. Whilst you have the Loup’s full forward running a lonely 10k on a Saturday morning for the love of a game, Ronan Scott is ordering a Variety Meal from KFC to soak up his hangover before driving to Keady to watch a MacRory match on soft seat thinking about his hourly wage. There’s something wrong there.

Waltzing Matilda

I think the Australians get a raw deal. You get the feeling that the resentment many hold towards that great nation is the result of two things. Firstly, the fact that they have a Union Jack on their flag gets a few goats up as you know flags are deemed important in this part of the globe. Secondly, they live the lifestyle we all aspire to. They play something close to what we do in terms of a national sport, but do so in fine weather all year round. They’re better looking and are naturally stronger and fitter. We may harp on about the hardiness of a bog man or the stamina of a lad who dungs out the yard but these lads from Down Under are born like that before lifting a shovel. Let’s face it – we’re fairly jealous of our cousins from the southern hemisphere even though many of them were rogue ancestors of our own, sent down on a boat for being a bit of an eejit.

I speak with authority here on this subject. It’s not a period of my life that I’m overly proud of but it’s worth the telling if it makes the average yokel change their views on the Aussie nation. Back in 1959 the convict boats were still in use even though it wasn’t common knowledge. The Irish Government turned a blind eye to the Guards turfing a few lads onto a prison ship and pointing it in the direction of Circular Quay. I had been playing a bit of Rugby in Blackrock at the time and living the life of a handsome bachelor. Unfortunately I feel in with a middlin crew and began to ape their mannerisms, turning my back on the hard-working Presbyterian ethos instilled in me by the Northern way.

Missing Mass soon turned into bad language. I togged out for Drumcondra GAC one Sunday morning as a ringer in the Dublin Championship and was torturing the Glasnevin full back with a torrent of verbal abuse in a strong northern twang. I’d never seen a man as intimidated. I was also probably one of the strongest men in Ireland at that time, having spent weeks honing my muscles outside the pubs of Dublin. My job was to lift inebriated women home up to four miles away. I was feared throughout the county and beyond. Unfortunately that sense of infallibility got to me completely and I embarked on a period of complete disregard for anyone I encountered in authority.

It all came to a head when I was lifted by the guards for stealing a bag of Greek spuds and apple tart from a small vendor outside Quinn’s, five minutes after the act. It was 8pm when I was taken. By midnight I was sailing.

I’d rather not go into the details of the journey apart from the fact that everyone on the boat had heard of by feats on the field and I won the bare knuckle competition as I had no willing opponents. By the time the ship docked in Australia , the locals had been well clued in about my arrival and before I had time to draw breath, two contracts were set before me by the now defunct Sydney Swallows and Perth Packers. That apple tart seemed to have awarded me with a ticket to fulfil the dreams of most red-blooded Irishman, getting paid abroad for playing a bit of ball.

The Swallows were my choice and I arrived bright and early next morning for the first training session of the season. The squad seemed a bit stand-offish at the start, perhaps afraid of my fearsome appearance and reputation. I was also quite confident having been the King Dick of Dublin County football for the previous season. To me, the Aussie game seemed a little easier what with points for wides and taking a breather for a few seconds every time I fielded the ball. I thought I would lord it.

In an unprecedented fall from grace, that notion of rugged Irish toughness outperforming beach-toned Australian muscle was shattered when the first ball came my way. I was unceremoniously flattened on the Australian grass with a gentle shoulder by the Swallows’ captain Brett Dinkum. For the next hour the hard man from Ireland was made fun of, humiliated and tortured by every member of his new club. Even the female physio cracked me a swift left-hander when I complained of double vision. I screamed a woman’s scream.

In order to save face and return some pride to the country and association I was representing, I decided to do a bit of slagging off the ball. My ‘your blade’s a glipe’ was met with blank stares. The level of sledging back then wasn’t what it is now. Those were more innocent days.

I never returned to the club and signed up to doing toilet duties at the Grand Opera House for the next three years. Mickey Harte has often lambasted our relationship with their game. He’s right. They’ll only expose us for the white-skinned, freckle-faced, jelly-legged sports men we are. Those fellas are serious. They haven’t wasted years toning useless muscles stooling in the mosses across Ireland . At the age of five they’re in the gym. All we can do is complain of their brutality whilst secretly harbouring a serious resentment that they have it all. Compare Kylie Minogue to Foster and Allen. Barbequed chicken to a plate of beans. Jason Akermanis to Colm Parkinson. I thought I was the GAA’s High King in 1959. Over there I was just a Joker.

2011 GAA Prospects

After years of campaigning, letter writing and general nuisance making, I finally received the call. When the letter arrived on Monday morning with the Dublin postmark I knew straight away that the men with the power had finally come to their senses. I have been given the position of general overseer of things in every county. They officially call me a trouble-shooter. My first remit is to sort out the footballing situation in Kilkenny with the target being a league point, or drawn game, in 2012. It’s a mighty task but one I’ve already begun looking into by finding jobs in the county for retired footballers from decent counties. The downside to this is that I have to leave aside all other GAA related business which includes this column so as not to compromise the secretive nature of my new career.

So as these are the last words I’ll compose for this fine organ, I thought it’d be in the best interests of our provincial hopefuls if I bluntly lay it on the line. Previous to this, I’ve had to hold my tongue as a negative reaction could harm the whole publication as well as endanger my being. Let us start with the Saffrons. This lot get my goat most of all. This is a county with an abundance of resources. Belfast is full of people. The glens of Antrim offer acres of fields to practice on. This county should be challenging Kerry and Kilkenny for the right to be labelled the Kingdom of Ireland. Yet what do they do with that space – open chip shops and fight amongst each other over the merits of city and country life. Baker Bradley looked like the man who’d sort that out and he did for a while. But rumours have surfed that the Glenullin man has succumbed to the delights of a steakette bap. It is a deep fried battered burger in a soft round bread roll. I have also been told he has started ‘slegging’ the city lads. It’s a great disappointment altogether and, in my new role, I would advise that the search needs to turn to a more fearsome character. Step up Martin Rogan.

Armagh I’m not so worried about. They’re slowly emerging from that permanent high under Joe Kernan. Armagh were always a once-a-decade team. Under Big Joe they were annual contenders, changing the mindset of the average Armagh supporter. They expected success and that didn’t sit well with me. There was something endearing about seeing old Armagh jerseys being pulled out from the attic when they’d win Ulster after a decade in the doldrums. Now, every Armagh fan has a new top. They boo when they lose and demand managerial change. Back in the day you could have managed the Orchard for twenty years, win one tournament and be labelled a legend. However, I feel the bad times are about to return and a sense of equilibrium will be established in the county. Nothing to be done here. As for Cavan, it’s a daunting task. I’d favour the Wexford model from the last few years who just got the ball to Mattie Forde and see how far he could take them. The same goes for Seanie Johnston. All Cavan needs is 14 hod carriers.

Derry need Baker. It’s as simple as that. Can you imagine the sons acting up? Could you even contemplate the Ballinderry players throwing a huff and sitting at home whilst the Oaks take on Laois in the league? Bradley used to prowl the lanes of Derry as a youngster, lord over all he viewed. It’d be like The Don returning to Milan after a 30-year exile to reclaim the old turf. Donegal may well be on the up under Jim McGuinness. I honestly hope he doesn’t attempt to change their natural ways in the process. There’s something unique about a team winning matches with no drinks ban. St Gall’s have shown it can be done in the modern era. If I’m posted out to the Hills of Dungloe I’ll be slipping the lads a dram after training.

Down are in fine fettle. This is a county we all manage to get behind unless you’re from the Orchard. Their feats in the 60s will always remain dear to those of a certain generation. Ulster needs a good Down team and under McCartan they should be about for another while. I’d leave this crowd untouched. Perhaps I would advice a form of anti-Australian ethnic cleansing in the county, as they seem to be a target for the Aussie Rules scouts. I suppose it is closer to Australia on the map. Fermanagh on the outside appear to be a county in turmoil. They’re not. It’s a clever ruse to keep the county on the back pages. That keeps the sponsors happy. Don’t forget, Fermanagh are barely a county. They’re doing alright.

Monaghan have never won the All-Ireland. They never will. I don’t think they really care either for a very obvious and understandable reason. In Wikipedia it says, “In 1930 Monaghan beat Kildare in a semi-final to reach the All-Ireland final, where Kerry beat them by 3-11 to 0-2 without their goalkeeper touching the ball.” Seriously, I’d advise the Farney Board to stay away from even attempting to compete in the All-Ireland final, as that stat will only be brought up in the build-up.

Finally, onto Tyrone. They would provide me with the most work. Phasing out the old hands needs careful management and whilst I acknowledge Harte’s ability to do so, it’s like a father cutting the lads out of a will. He grew up in adulthood with them. They provided him with the pride and pleasure you’d associate with a da. Harte simply cannot be asked to break the bad news. That’s where I’d come in. I’d call Dooher et al into a room and hand them a letter saying the game’s up. I’d integrate McMenamin into normal society.

Despite all the above, aren’t we, up here, in a better position than we experienced during the bleak 70s and 80s. Ulster GAA is healthy and although they lose this valuable tool, I still might come knocking. Good luck.

The Ulster Aristocrats

Isn’t it great to see Down in the All-Ireland final exactly fifty years after their first appearance in the final and their initial Sam Maguire? You’d think something like that is written in the stars or was just meant to be. There are a lot of superstitious people around the country who’d buy into this destiny theory. Well I don’t. It’s a load of codswallop. There’s no such thing. You either work hard to get there or you don’t. However, sometimes a little bit of fortune can go a long way. If James McCartan claims all the plaudits for winning this weekend, there’ll be one man massively upset at his scenario. That man is me.

I’m probably breaking some kind of unwritten gentleman’s agreement but if I hadn’t offered my services and advice to wee James this year then Benny Coulter would be lying on a beach in Portugal this weekend. You see, there was some hype over the 1960 team this year. They have been feted the length and breadth of the country since the start of the year. They’re bound to be at the point of exhaustion and maybe even cursing the day they won the damned thing. I’d say Sean O’Neill is desperately hoping that Marty Clarke and his troops win this weekend to take the focus off them for the rest of the year, before they keel over.

I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this but Wee James got a bit caught up in the whole 50 years craic and had a mad idea. I can see where he was coming from. In recent years Down had been getting further and further away from winning anything of note. Embarrassing defeats to Wicklow and their likes was a common way to end their championship year. They hadn’t even shown signs of winning an Ulster. McCartan knew that he was going to be given a couple of years at least to build a new team. However, his plan for 2010 was revealed to be by a close friend in the Down camp. James thought that, in order to honour the team of 1960, he would attempt to field as many of that side as possible during the championship.

Luckily my snake in the Down backroom team filmed a couple of training session James was putting the lads of ’60 though. He sent me the footage via the email. It was extremely hard to watch. Brian McIvor and Paddy Tally had these lads, some of them in their late 70s, doing bleep tests and repetitive press-ups. McIvor seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling Kevin Mussen that he was a ‘hape of dung’ and punishing Dan McCartan for a mistimed block by making him do a dozen laps of the field, which took him 4 hours to complete til 3am. James had arranged a challenge match for the ’60 team against the Abbey MacRory Cup team. It was a horrendous piece of footage. The final score of 8-29 to 0-2 in the Abbey’s favour only begins to describe the horror of the occasion. On nine occasions the ambulance was called for with more than half the Down side having collapsed with either exhaustion or suspected heart complaints, and that was in the first half.

McIvor decided that instead of subjecting Mussen and his men to national humiliation, they would just play two members of the team at corner forward in each game, rotating the players each time so that every member of the ’60 squad got a turn out at some stage. I have it on good authority that Joe Lennon and Paddy Doherty were in serious training for the Donegal game at the start of the campaign. He was then going to roll out Sean O’Neill and his da for the expected game against Tyrone. It was a suicide mission. Imagine what Ricey would be saying to O’Neill? After I got wind of this remarkable plan I jumped straight into the motor and after three days of solid negotiations I managed to convince McCartan to ditch the plan for the sake of the memory of 1960 and the general health of the players themselves. It was hard going. McIvor was reluctant to give in until I mentioned to him some made-up European law against cruelty to over-60s. He soon backed down. Tally was just laughing in the background at the whole shenanigans. I suspect he was behind the mad idea and was taking a hand out of the other two.

Well, it has all turned out for the best. Down now find themselves in the All-Ireland without the help of lads old enough to be their grandfathers. The ’60 squad have been able to attend the rash of celebratory occasions without the aid of wheelchairs, crutches and an individual breathing apparatus. I’m sure the media will hound Wee James after the game if the Mourne men are successful. They’ll be looking for words of wisdom from the latest GAA guru. Just remember, if you see a vacant look in his eye and a pause when asked how he had turned this underachieving side into the best in Ireland, be of no doubt who he’s thinking about.

College Skulduggery

On St Patrick’s Day most of the attention will be on Croke Park and Crossmaglen’s quest for another title. Or maybe you’re a hurling aficionado and will be cheering on Clarinbridge in the first match. But, for me, the crucial piece of action taking place that day will be played out in the Athletic Grounds in Armagh. For there, St Colman’s of Newry take on St. Patrick’s Dungannon to see who’ll lift the MacRory Cup and be labelled the best footballing college in the province. It all sounds a rather nice affair with families getting a day out watching their son or sibling play out another school game that will probably be forgotten about within six months. How wrong can you be? I’ll be casting a cold eye on proceedings, trying not to visit the old memories and haunted feelings I endured as a lad sitting through A Levels in the days when they were relatively difficult.

The school’s management team, despite starring for the county minors the previous summer, overlooked me. That was an unusual occurrence in any school. Anyone who could kick a ball straight gets on the school squad, a group usually numbering something like forty-five lads. Back in those days, parents turned a blind eye to the odd hammering from a teacher as long as the son got in the squad, especially for the photo on match days. It took me a long time to work this out. To get back to the first predicament, the reason I was overlooked for the MacRory side was simply a clash of interests. The manager taught Latin. Any lad who wanted a place on the side chose Latin for A Level. I was a man of my own mind and took on Woodwork, Greek Mythology and Sums.

As it turned out that year, the entire MacRory team were made up of lads who spoke of ‘post mortum’, ‘anno domini’ and ‘alma mater’ yet hadn’t a notion of how to add the scores up after a game. I accepted that injustice as there were plenty of other things to keep me interested at the time and there was no chance the school would ever win the thing anyway. However, that carefree attitude came back to bite me later in the year when I was rejected from every university I applied to, even though I was guaranteed fine grades. It didn’t take long for the penny to drop. One day in school, shortly after our boys exited the MacRory at the quarter-final stage, the big midfielder grunted to me that he’d been given a place in one of the top universities in Ulster, to study Law. Now, this wasn’t the cultured midfielder who could read a game before the first ball was thrown in. This was your plodder who barely moved form the middle of the field, grunted during games and was told before each half started what way he was playing.

Soon, players of similar ilk were full of joy at the news that they had been accepted into third level institutions onto high-class courses. What took the biscuit was when The Brain was celebrating his acceptance into the Study of Classical Arts course in Belfast, a most sought after place. The Brain was nick-named that so for two reasons. Firstly it was a term of affection. He had the tendency to score 0% in every exam. With lads being cruel at that age, he was labelled The Brain which he accepted readily, oblivious to the intended mockery. Secondly, his real name was Brian but on almost every piece of paper he signed, he misspelt it as Brain. The Brain never actually got any game time that season on the school team. He was simply there to intimidate the opposition whilst sitting on the bench. He had that look of ‘Lurch’ from the Adams Family.

It dawned on me eventually that having ‘MacRory Cup player’ written on your CV was your ticket to academic progression. Universities would fall over themselves to secure the services of anyone with supposed footballing pedigree as it kept the name of that house of learning in the national spotlight if their sporting teams did well. A few years later I attending the College All Stars awards and was shocked at the behind the scenes shenanigans that went on. University representatives offered all manner of shiny and glittering goodies to MacRory footballers in return for a decision to attend their institution. Watches, women and wealth were dangled.

I was foolish back then. If only I had taken on Latin and accepted the weekly beating from the maniacal Master, my MacRory team membership may well have led to greater riches. Instead, I sat back and worked tremendously to achieve modestly good grades, especially the B in Sums. Yet, the likes of The Brain was already secured a golden ticket despite turning up on the wrong day for each of his exams. I’m not bitter now and I’m sure times have changed. The lads on this year’s MacRory teams, I’m sure, don’t get the same privileges The Brain did. You couldn’t get away with it now. Whistle blowers have more confidence in the 21st Century. Yet, it’s hard for me not to look back and think of what might have been. Optimum est pati quod emendare non possis; it is best to endure what you cannot change.

Feck Sake Umpire

Another weekend and another controversy. Colm Cooper scored a point against the Dubs in Croke Park only it wasn’t. The umpire decided not to allow it for a reason only he knows to himself. Maybe the sun was in his eyes but sure it was February and the sun isn’t really all that taxing approaching the evening time. Perhaps he looked at Cooper and though a lad that slight couldn’t have possibly hit the ball that far. Only he knows. But as Jack O’Connor stated afterwards, enough is enough. Ireland’s not the laid back country it once was. In the past, such a dispute was resolved with a wink and a pint and forgotten about in the morning. All that changed eight years ago when Marsden got the line for chinning Jordan in the final. Before that, players like Paidi O’Se could go toe-to-toe swinging right hooks and at worse end up with a stern talking to by the ref. Now, the right thing is done it seems, that is unless it involves the men beside the posts.

What can be done about this? I have heard that they might change the coats that the umpires wear, bringing them more in line with the striped outfits you’d see our Australian cousins don for their games. How that will address their decision making is beyond me. I’ve heard of vertical stripes helping weighty people look slight less hefty but I’ve yet to hear of it rectifying chronically deteriorating eyesight. For when all is said and done isn’t that the problem here? The GAA are holding on to a tradition that sees them hire pensioners to gauge whether a ball has gone between two posts. It’s a well known yarn that just before Sludden awarded that goal for Meath against Louth last year, he threatened the umpire that he’d not give him his teeth back from the officials’ changing room unless he raised the green flag. It left the umpire perturbed and confused about the whole incident.

The major hindrance here though is surely eyesight. I’m not aware of one man or woman over the age of sixty who can drive a car without the aid of seeing glasses. What makes GAA headquarters think that the same men can see a white ball amongst the white clouds pass between two white posts? It’s lunacy and I cannot get my head around their persistence in employing officials in this age bracket. There has to be some kind of financial reason such as exemption from paying tax if they hire pensioners or maybe it cuts down on the catering bill as all those lads would want after a game is a cup of tea and a scone. No matter the reason, the advancement in technology means their persistent errors are highlighted with undeniable evidence.
Referees are given vigorous tests to see if they are fit enough to take charge of a game at any level, and rightly so. What examinations do umpires endure? I would excuse them from treadmill analysis or bleep tests but surely some form of eye examination is a must as well as the ability to make correct decisions and lift a flag. Some umpires might claim that the glare of the sky on their spectacles hinders their sight or that the rim of the glasses may cause them to misjudge the flight of a ball. They are good points and the GAA know they’d be in choppy waters if they discriminated against people with glasses. My solution is to look at Art McRory. He wore the thickest-lensed glasses ever seen on a man and never missed a trick, winning Ulster and league titles. It also gave him a menacingly wide-eyed look that offered him an advantage in any form of combat. I’d imagine that if Sludden had faced an umpire staring back at him with those type of glasses, Louth might well have been reigning Leinster champions today.

There are also the small binoculars that can be attached to glasses as well as tiny wipers for those drizzly days when the spectacles get streamed up. As well as that, I have a friend who works in a science factory in South America and he informs me he has been assigned by some GAA bigwig to investigate the use of an electric current that picks up any movement between the two posts. This volt then surges into the body of the umpire through a wire up their sleeve from the bottom of the post. The umpire will automatically jump slightly into the air and lean forward to pick up the flag. It has been tested twice on two Maned Wolves which ended tragically. The South American Maned Wolf is now an endangered species. The point is that moves are being made to do the best with what we have. The GAA know that ageism will be used against them if they begin to phase out the current batch of umpires. Be it thicker glasses, electric shocks or standing on scaffolding, something needs to be done soon before the crowd begin to turn on the defenceless old-timers.

I just cannot see how the striped jumpers will improve umpire performance. Stripes have often been associated with criminals or burglars. Maybe there’s more to that than meets the eye.

Fermanagh Chaos

So words like chaos and upheaval are now being mentioned in the same breath as Fermanagh GAA. I usually have my ear to the ground on these things but Fermanagh tends to be off the radar for me recently. I was involved in an unsavoury incident a couple of years ago at the Enniskillen bus station which hasn’t been resolved so I have refused to set foot in the county for fear of burnings and a rising. It was just an honest mistake blown all out of proportion. I really did think it was green toilet roll for St Patrick’s Day, not a Fermanagh jersey. But all that is besides the point. Fermanagh is in a terrible state of chassis right now and having experienced manys a revolt in my time, I’m in a good position to advise on a resolution for everyone concerned.

From my understanding there appears to be some form of communication problem. The new management have their way of doing things. The players have been used to a different set up over previous years. Therein probably lies the collision. About twice a year I am faced with a similar scenario. I’d return from the fields only to find that what was once the kitchen is now the spare bathroom. The bedroom is the living room as so on. Herself will take a form of head stagger and swop rooms about. I react badly to change and would maybe not set foot in the house for a week or until there’s a dire need for a shower. After a while though you realise that it’s no big deal and accept the new regime.

A large section of the Fermanagh squad appear to have reacted badly to a change in circumstances and are refusing to return to base. Anyone who knows me will realise the side I’m going to take here. I have no time for the modern way of approaching the game. Sometimes I find myself getting emotional when I witness a player asking for a drink of water from the sidelines during a game. Water? In my time and that of many others water was rationed at home. In a big family, you drew up a rota for having a drink of water. Now, these players expect water in plastic bottles to be hauled at them by some water boy. Fortunately, I once saw Penrose drinking the water, spitting it out and washing his neck with it. I admired that and have it recorded in case I ever get a job in management again. That was resourcefulness.

I don’t want to create any more controversy. But there was one snippet of information that did reach my way during the week. I heard it on dubious authority that the initial ruckus was caused when a senior member of the Fermanagh squad kicked up a fuss that they were getting scrambled eggs for breakfast and not poached. Apparently under Charlie Mulgrew they were introduced to the idea that eggs could be poached. Two of the farmer players were rather concerned about this as they took it that the eggs had been poached from an unsuspecting farmer. When it was fully explained, poached eggs became the norm for pre-match get together. Malachy O’Rourke then proposed the idea of putting a dash of pepper on the poached eggs. Again, this was met with scepticism but after a couple of opinion leaders in the squad tried it and liked it, pepper on poached eggs was all the rage for two solid years, cooked for exactly two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

I’m told that John O’Neill, like myself, isn’t a big fan of new-fangled ways of eating eggs, preferring the hard-boiled effort or, at a stretch, soft-boiled. He was told in no uncertain terms before he took the job that poached eggs with pepper were important to this squad. O’Neill took this as a bit of light-hearted humour and went with the boiled effort first day out. The reaction was monumental. Players refused to even look at the egg, with shell attached, on the plate. Next day, he tried the scrambled approach. Again, it was no-go. One lad from Lisnaskea ate it anyway but was unceremoniously emptied five times during the training game, which followed the scrambled egg standoff. O’Neill had a choice here: Give the players what they want or stand firm and put his mark on a new era for Fermanagh football. He could have gone one better and produced omelettes, coddled eggs or Chinese steamed eggs. However, being a man of tradition, he reverted to the boiled effort.

The rest is history and an on-going one at that. Fermanagh and egg-eating go way back to the time of the Maguires who believed that the English, “ne’re could stomach an Irish Gael wi’ egg in his blood”. It’s an unfortunate start to O’Neill’s tenure and it could unravel badly for the newcomer. Or there’s just that chink of light that time will heal the sense of loss and change on the players’ mindset. Maybe they need to do what I did and take long walks around the fields and ponder the great mysteries of the universe. Only then will the issues that caused the present chaos seem small and insignificant. Maybe O’Neill will back down and give way to this, on paper, small request. I wouldn’t. Ireland is watching.

After the first couple of rounds in the league, managers are now obtaining a firm grasp of their team’s mindset and potential capabilities for the coming season. A couple of wins will have instilled a belief that perhaps this is their year for lifting a bit of silverware. Two defeats and the wolves are at the door, especially if you’re a relatively new manager with no pedigree. They’re the pros and cons of a high profile job these days within the GAA. Inter-county managers have to deal with the enormous pressure of having his county’s hopes resting on their every decision. The other side of the coin is that they get a rash of frees meals as guest speakers at club functions. It’s not just managers who avail of the perks of being a high profile GAA figure. I think I read a stat recently which stated that Joe Brolly has not paid for a meal or drink since 2003, even when he’s not performing. Them’s the breaks.

Yet, every time I hear of ‘pressure mounting’ on managers I allow myself a wise smirk. Those lads don’t know the meaning of real pressure; the type of responsibility no mortal human should endure. In 1957 I finally answered the greatest call of all. For three months I had received a daily visit from a monk who was staying up in Portglenone. He was attempting to encourage me to buy into the idea that a team of Trappist monks could compete in the Antrim division two that year. Each day I rejected the invitation. Although I recognised its novel nature and the opportunity to become a nationwide hero in the role of manager of a group of monks, I was also acutely aware of the brutal nature of Antrim football at that time. Despite my protestations about the likelihood of a physical hammering every week from teams like Cargin or Dunloy, monk Benedict persisted with such grace and mostly silence I finally agreed to take them on for a year.

If you’re not familiar with Trappist monks, they’re a strict bunch of men. They don’t partake in the usual changing room banter. If a woman walks past they throw their glances to the floor. Laughing is seen as an evil so if a monk happened to slip on a bit of soap in a comical fashion, the men would bang their heads off the wall or slap each other full on the jaw to prevent any form of mirth. The vow of silence was the hardest aspect of their lifestyle for me to manage. I was completely oblivious as to whether they understood my instructions or not. They’d just nod and then reflect for about twenty minutes. On the field during initial challenge games there were no shouts for the ball, criticism or encouragement. Just the opponents’ voices could be heard. Even in the stands, our followers were other Trappist monks and Trappist nuns, all observing the vow of silence.

Before the first league game I received a wonderful boost from the Vatican. A short note wished me well for the forthcoming season and the chance to be absolved from all sins if we managed to stay up. I had been messing about for a few years with women and illegal distilling so complete and total absolution was a Godsend. He also said he’d be reading the results every Monday in the paper and added that this was a great opportunity for all religious orders to reach out to the common man and secure their lofted position in Ireland for future generations. Now, that’s the pressure I’m talking about. Not your ‘losing to Cavan and Wicklow in succession’ pressure. This is the Holy See depending on your capabilities to shore a team of monks into a respectable division two outfit.

I don’t think I need to explain how things panned out. The first game away to Aghagallon was a massacre. That Sunday morning the priest up there had been giving off about the young lads in the parish for their sense of dress and attitude to women and drink. The appearance of the Portglenone monks lining up to play them in their frocks was a red flag to a bull. The South Antrim men obliterated my charges with and without the ball. Skull caps, tassels and sandals were soaring through the spring air as my men remained silent and quite accepting of their 34-point hammering. We managed to play another two games in the league that year with similar outcomes. To their eternal credit, my lads never complained about the brutality and spent the aftermath of each game in the changing rooms praying for the other side.

I never heard from the Vatican again nor have I ventured anywhere near Portglenone since. I’m led to believe the Trappists moved down to Kildare a week after the venture folded. Looking back, I’m glad I took on the job as nothing has ever compared to the size of the task since. International managers think they have the weight of their nation on their shoulders. Try nations and the heavenly Gods for size. Baker Bradley thinks he has his woes as manager of Antrim in their division two this year. Just take a short drive down to St Mary’s Aghagallon, Baker, and retrace my footsteps that horrible day. Try to imagine the turmoil.